Bittersweet Never
by forensicpathologistninja
Summary: Lilly used to claim that it wasn't fair to play I Never with Veronica, because there were too many ways for her to win. Now there are too many ways for her to lose, and all of them are soul-crushingly painful. *NOTE: Keith died in the plane crash*


**Bittersweet Nevers**

**Veronica's thoughts on the game _I Never_ after Lilly's death.**

Sometimes she misses being able to relax with her group of friends and play silly little games. It had been so easy, back before Lilly died (was murdered), to trust them not to take cheap shots – whether on purpose or not – in games like _I Never_. But now, even knowing they wouldn't purposely hurt her, knowing that some of the things she's afraid of are completely ridiculous, she can't bring herself to join them around the bonfire at the beach.

Lilly used to claim that it wasn't really fair to play _I Never _with Veronica, because there were too many ways for her to win. Innocent little Veronica Mars somehow always managed to stay sober long after the others had started asking if they were supposed to drink the affirmative or the negative. Now there are too many ways for her to lose, and all of them are soul-crushingly painful.

_**I've never seen my best friend's dead body.**_

She still sees Lilly sometimes. When she's walking down the street, driving to work, whatever. She sees a flash of blond hair or hears an impish giggle and for a second, her heart stops and she can only think of the girl who started as her very best friend and ended in a pool of her own blood.

She sees Lilly, alive and whole in the day-to-day, but at night, her hands and the pool deck are covered in sticky red that she can't wash off.

_**I've never been drugged and raped.**_

She can't remember any of it, but her nightmares have shown her a thousand different ways it might have happened. Was she awake? Asleep? Did she try to stop him, cry for him to leave her alone? She'll never know.

She doesn't even know if it hurt when he thrust into her for the first time (but she knows it hurt the next morning).

And this, more than anything, breaks her in painful ways that none of her friends can imagine.

_**I've never found out that my best friend was someone I didn't really know at all.**_

'I've got a secret. A good one.' echoes in her mind sometimes, and she wishes she'd never heard those words. She'd known Lilly was a wild card, had known Lilly lived for the thrill of breaking the rules. But she'd never suspected Lilly was so stupid (and it must have been stupidity, because selfishness still hurts to much) that she'd sleep with the man who abused his entire family.

Her Lilly had never been an angel. But the girl she discovered after her best friend's death (murder) was downright cruel and much closer to evil than she'd ever wanted to imagine.

_**I've never been locked in a fridge and set on fire by my (ex)boyfriend's murderer father.**_

She cannot handle tiny enclosed spaces. Or lighting candles. Every time she smells smoke, she's caught in a waking nightmare of freezers that don't open and father's that arrive two seconds too late.

Fire still taunts her from the refuge it's taken in her dreams (nightmares). Sometimes she still wakes up with burning skin and smoke-filled lungs.

And it was more than ironic, because in the end, the tapes she'd been almost willing to die to protect had been destroyed by the one boy who still meant something to her.

_**I've never committed a felony.**_

Breaking and entering.

But is it still a felony if it's for a good cause? She doesn't think it should be, but has a feeling the law wouldn't agree with her.

And then it was really all for nothing, because in the end, Grace still lived with her parents, Meg was still dead, the Manning's still hated Veronica, and Duncan was still on the other side of the world with a daughter that belonged to him, but not to her (but she could have... he'd wanted to take her along... guess this wasn't a true love story, huh?).

_**I've never helped my ex skip town with his illegitimate love child because his baby mama died as the result of a bus bombing that was probably partly meant to kill me.**_

This barb hurts. A lot. She and Meg weren't friends when the bus crashed (was blown up), but it kills her a little to know that so many other people had to die just because Cassidy wanted to keep his secrets.

And wasn't she one of his secrets? But she was the secret that had lived one, while Meg was the innocent who died (probably in her place, because what was Meg if not a replacement for her?).

And when she'd asked her father that one fateful question 'What about the baby?' she'd known it was a mistake. Because there was no way that any answer he had to that question would ever make her life any easier. No matter the outcome, this baby would set her on a downward spiral like she'd never known before (if only she'd realized what she was risking by hiding things from her father).

_**I've never ruined every important relationship in my life because I couldn't let myself trust someone else.**_

But after the things she'd been through, could you really blame her?

She'd learned at an early age that people lied, cheated, and stole. It was just what they did, how they were. And when she'd tried to remain blissfully oblivious to just how far they would take it after Lilly's murder, life had shoved her face in it with a house reeking of alcohol and mornings waking up with missing underwear.

_**I've never had to watch my best friend's murderer get off (in**__**more ways than one).**_

She doesn't know which one was worse.

Watching him throw his head back in ecstasy as he gyrated over her best friend, or watching his cold little smile when he was acquitted.

Both memories brought the bile to her throat, and kept her up at night. Both made her eyes burn with unshed tears (and 'oh Lilly, how _could _you?'). So it was kind of a toss up as to which one bothered her more.

It seems like there might be an obvious answer, but she really doesn't know which hurts worse.

_**I've never watched my rapist blow up the plane carrying my father.**_

And this _was_ the barb that would always hurt the very worst.

Nothing she could ever possibly be put through could ever be as bad as the memory of her father's answering machine. No fire that ate at her tender flesh would ever hurt as much as the one surrounding the plane that should have carried her father safely home.

And more often than not, she wishes she could go back to that night and ignore Logan's soft reassurances. Ignore him and shoot Cassidy fucking Casablancas in his smug little mouth.

_**I've never thought I was going to die.**_

She has.

Too many times to count, and they're all a swirl of fire and water and GHB and Cassidy's mocking eyes and Aaron's mocking voice and Mercer's mocking laugh. Sometimes she still wakes up screaming with smoke in her eyes and water in her mouth and lead in her veins.

It still hurts more when her father dies. That's something she'd never thought she'd be able to survive.

And sometimes she still isn't sure whether or not she has.

_**I've never watched someone kill themselves.**_

She can still hear the sound Cassidy's body made when it hit the ground.

Her sick little mind sometimes imagines what it must feel like to jump so far that all your bones are crushed and your flesh is just a bloody mess around them. But sometimes she thinks it's not terribly important how it feels. It's not like you'd survive it long enough to know.

And besides, she doesn't really care much about how poor little _Beaver_ felt at the end of his short life.

_**I've never wished it were me instead.**_

Another thing she's done more times than she can count.

It was an idea she started toying with when Lilly was murdered, and then a little more when her mother left. And then a lot more when her mother left again. And nearly every day since her father died she's wanted to follow him into the dark abyss.

Sometimes she thinks she already has.


End file.
